Display Down Under; New Ad Network

The online advertising industry in Australia seems to be mirroring that in the US and elsewhere, with the IAB Australia reporting double-digit industry growth for mobile, search and display. Mobile is growing the fastest, and for the first time since 2002 online ad revenue beat out free-to-air television. Video display grew by 56%, and 58% of mobile ad revenue was from tablets. Read more.

New Ad Network

On Multichannel News, Jeff Baumgartner covers second-screen app specialist Viggle, which has introduced an ad platform “that, it says, will offer an initial reach of nearly 10 million thanks to a group of launch partners that includes Boxfish, BuddyTV and Dijit Media’s NextGuide. A goal of the new Viggle Audience Network is to provide an advertising aggregation point across a growing variety of TV companion and social networking applications, said Viggle chief revenue officer Kevin Arrix.” Read more.

Viewable Milestones

As part of the cross-industry Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative, ANA chief Bob Liodice riffs on the expectations for viewability metrics on the IAB’s blog, saying, “The Media Rating Council (MRC) expects to lift its Viewable Impression Advisory by the end of this year, and at that time marketers will eagerly start buying digital media on viewable metrics.” Read more. The IAB also released a detailed timeline that outlines next steps in the 3MS program, an FAQ and a video with Yahoo data scientist James Deaker, who discusses “how IAB SafeFrame enables viewability and innovation.” See that.

Smarter Fraud

Malware scammers are taking their dark art one step further by creating their own ad networks, according to Bloomberg. Users could install legitimate apps from trusted sources, such as the Google Play store, only to have malware attached in the code. "The issue is that for pretty much anybody who builds a mobile application, they don't make much money from the application, so they have to build in these hooks to the mobile ad networks. What happens is those ad networks are more or less behaving like crude botnets," said Wade Williamson, a senior security analyst for Palo Alto Networks. Read more.

Danger Modeling

Google “Digital Marketing Evangelist” Avinash Kaushik lays out on his personal blog what he thinks makes effective multichannel attribution modeling on his site. He begins, “My macro goal is to make you dangerously informed. By the end of this post, if you pay attention, you'll know the often hidden nuances and you'll be dangerous to any analyst/consultant/vendor who walks into your cubicle/office ...” Read dangerously, my friends.

More Viewability Debate

There are four myths about viewability, claims James Green, CEO of Magnetic. He debunks all on Marketing Land. Green doesn’t think 2014 will be the year viewability becomes the standard for brand-focused display, either. Read more.

The Attribution Gopher

Martin Kihn, a research director for Gartner, draws a parallel between the film “Caddyshack” and the display advertising industry. Just when marketers think they’ve figured out consumers, another issue pops up, much like the film’s persistent gopher. In this case it’s multidevice attribution, which prevents advertisers from seeing the consumer as a whole of all their consumption and not just a bunch of fragmented cookies. Kihn offers up companies like Google, Facebook or Amazon as potential answers, but so far each of those companies has some bumps to work out before that can happen. Read more.